Bitcoin Forum

Iv been looking at mining for a while now but as you can see i pay quite high electricity fees. Ive done mining in the past with gpu but have always wanted to start btc mining. Is this even possible with such high electricity costs? Im even open to mining ltc and then converting to btc but maybe id just be as well buying any btc with flat?

You can most certainly mine, you just can't do so at a profit with electricity costs of $.21/KWh. If your primary motivation for mining to make money, then you'll have to host your machine somewhere else with a lower electricity cost.

Sorry, but this grows ever more common across the world. Mining will continue to migrate to areas with the lowest electric cost.

Yeah i thought that much, It actually works out at more like 23 cents a kw/h. Would it not even be possible to mine alts then convert to btc at a profit? (off topic i know)

I haven't seen any alt coins that can be mined for a profit at that rate, but I could be wrong.  I got out of the alt market last summer when I saw the trend slowing down.

Dunno how accurate this website is but it may worth a try http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency (http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency)
You can calculate your earning of several altcoins + bitcoin based on the difficulty, power cost...etc, i made my calculation and it showed that I will have a huge bill without a real profit.

Nowadays mining Bitcoins is becoming worthless day by day!

This is only due to bigger miners with tons of Antminers/Spondoolies.

If you want to mine for a living, then consider buying 1000 of miners at once and make a personal mining hub for your own, or just quit thinking about mining since it's no longer profitable at all! :-\

Bitcoin-mining is stepping towards centralization!

dont forget that in 2016 btc income from mining will be half

Coinwarz is just good for current period. It's horrible long term as no difficulty change.  Use one like https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator  .  With it you can add difficulty.

But OP your could mine... just is not profitable and you won't roi on machine unless you mined with it and somehow sold for most of what you paid.  But would all involve selling.  Better solution is looking into hosting.  You can host at places much cheaper and you stand a chance at ROI.

but the value will be also very high, the current value already is about 100% more than what it was, so easily at this point will not count anything, incomparison when we were at 230

Your electricity price seems that is very high, maybe because it is the winter season? for the moment i don't think it worth mining even with s7.

That's just what electricity costs here year round.  I'd like to mine but think I'd be as well just sinking that cash straight into coin.

You might make a short term profit, but you won't even come close to making enough back to pay for ANY currently available miner before it goes unprofitable (if it EVER makes a profit).

 Cryptocoin mining is a low-electric-cost game if you want to make anything at it.

Looks like I will need to leave it to China.

If you want to support bitcoin better to set up a business that utilizes the coin instead of trying to mine with 21c/KWH.  It's just not feasible.

If you pay that much you can take a risk and buy some energy efficent S7 miner. If the bitcoin value raises above 500 USD your chance to get ROI will increase.
But let me ask you something. Do you want to mine to earn or do you want to be 'part' of the revolution?

If you do it for earnings, buy and hold your bitcoins, you got a much bigger chance to achieve your goal.

Why bother paying those rates, buy some hash on hashnest and you will pay about 10 c a kw/hr, its the best option for situations like this.  When you want to cashout just sell your hash power on the market.

There is hosting center you can put it in with China, US, Canada and others aswell those are just first 3 in my head.  But you can still own hardware but you need to send it somewhere where electricity is fair.

At current rate you really cannot run more then a miner for "fun" it will never be for profit, which is not what most want.

If your electricity is $0.21/kWh, it is better not to mine if you do not think mining is your hobby. There are mining farms in China, paying $0.04/kWh.

You could set up a small solo mining rig and gamble basically. Something that doesn't use too much power and leave it on for a couple of months.
You might be really lucky and find a block ;)

Honestly I wouldn't do it i mate. If it is a hobby then go ahead, but if you want some profit too it, it is a No Go.

In my country the price for elecrictiy is also very high. I try contact some datacenters and tried mining there, but eventually you are caught up with difficulty etc.
If you really want to mine, you could buy a second hand GPU and go for Monero or even Ethereum. This way it is more cost efficient.

Are you from Greece too? Same prices here!!  :P

thats too expensive.  I'm sorry.  You could get a antminer s7, but you would have to sell it in 6 months.  You could make a profit, probably break even, but 21 cents...ouch.  Maybe you can buy it, and host it somewhere for a lot cheaper.  (do a lot of research first).

Having it hosted kind of takes away the decentralization. There's no point to personal mining other than supporting the network. At his rate, he would be better off supporting Bitcoin by creating demand and making $ that way.

Price is in the UK,  makes me laugh when I'm in the USA and all the air condition units should not be adjusted due to the price of electricity.. 

I have to take exception to the comment about hosting and centralization. There is a huge difference between "cloud mining" and "hosting". A hosting facility does exactly that. It supplies electricity, space, cooling, and internet access, period. You own the miner, and direct in what way it's used. The hosting facility doesn't care how you use your miner. If you want to mine some obscure alt-coin, they don't care as long as you pay your monthly bill. You do have trust them not abscond with your hardware and not damage it. There are lots of the places.

Cloud mining on the other hand is just a financial transaction where you fund the ownership and use of the miners. You generally have zero control over the mining operation. You don't own anything, and are completely at the mercy of the operators to not just take your money and run, and pretend to cloud mine and not actually run a Ponzi scheme.

That is a good point on cloud mining even hashnest which is the one most used you cannot pick where to mine.  It's on their own pool and they do not let you point it where you want.  You will be mining BTC and it will be at their pool.

Hosting you have much more freedom as far as pools, which can be nice.  Sometimes it's nice to support some of the smaller but great pools.  It is unlikely any cloud hashing goes to like ckpool for example.  You need hosting if you want to point it where you want.

With 21 cent per KW it makes not sense to start mining.

Maybe you can earn a profit till june, but after the halving there is no way you would make profits.
Sure the price could increase, but that is no certainty at all.

When it comes to bitcoin mining, take notice of the following factors:

- Price per kW (everything under 10 cent is ok)
- Price of equipment (the miners + PSU)
- The difficulty (these last weeks the difficulty went sky-high)
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Since i don't know which equipment you are considering you should check this link and calculate your potential ROI time: http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator

If you need more information, let me know.

I was going to go for the s7, i know its a few quid but its the best one out their as far as i can tell. Only problem is even if the price went up for bitcoin i would still be mining at a loss, And once the halfing happens i would be making even less. Its a no win for me im afraid.

With this price, you would probably be better out buying bitcoin directly and wait for the price to rise.
Many people will say try cloud mining, but from experience i can say, it's not profitable any more.

Yeah i have been wrestling with the idea but it means dropping over 1k and with the way the market is at the moment im not sure if i want to buy any , If it crashes down a bit i will probably buy a bunch but if not and it goes up then i will probably just miss out :(

use the calculator, the calculator say me that you can have profit even at 0.21 cent, but you need to do some trading with your hash at some point, because of the diff, roi will be long

at 0.21 consumption is $189 and earning is still $330, so $140 of pure profit each month, with a single s7, 10 months to roi if diff remain unchanged...

Yeah i wouldn't do it too. I had some S3 miners > no profit but ROI by selling them
Then i bought S5 miners > no profit (clearly bitmain overpriced them)
The S7 i skipped knowing there would be no profit too.

If it is so then i would not suggest you to start mining as there will be no or a litltle profit.
If you hear me then a better idea is to invest in bitcoin, leave/hold them for a while and then sell.

Bitmain but also some other pools have a reputation too screw their customers. So far the only legit one i found was f2pool.

@OP
21 cent per KW is a lots of money compared what it will bring you.
If you use the calculator you will see your ROI (remember you have to buy the PSU too), will be too long for this investment to be worth while.

My advice is to buy some cloud hashing indeed.

What is wrong with antpool? Biggest thing I can think of is amount of hash there a lot don't like that.  But lowest PPS at 2.5 but it does not merge mine, and also does not share transaction fee's.  So with all that it is close to F2P likely.

But what is your specific problem with them?   And 21 cents is still pretty crazy I would host and you save 1/2 power which is huge overtime.  I just cant wrap mind around still mining at 21 cents.

Cloud mining is very risky these days.
First you got the scam companies
Second you got the companies that are creative with payouts (hiding blocks etc.).
Just google Hashnest hiding blocks.

according to a quick calculation I did.
It suggests that you would pay 18144euro for power of an antminer s7!

Not sure that my cacluations were correct so it may be out by a factor of 21, 24, 30 or 100 (due to numbers entered into an equation!)

Possibly not too out though.

Who cares if Hashnest are hiding blocks?
Their mining systems are still profitable!

However, even though the price of the Bitcoin has doubled, for some unknown reason, the antminer s3 GHS are at a 93% maintenance fee! Before the price increase they were at 80%? Very Confusing!

OF course hashnest hide some of the blocks, anpool finds a block every few hours, whereas revenue from hashnes comres about every 8 hours. But, they may just be coupling payments together!

Same situation as where I am high energy cost. I would just stick to buying Bitcoin and waiting for the price to go up sell and repeat than to buy any mining equipment at them costs.

Yeah if you live in a western country and/or a country where you pay over 15 cents per KW, you probably better out buying bitcoins or getting into cloud mining.
Hardware mining is too expensive.

Or look at hosting providers.  There are some out there you can host for 10 cent's or less.  Depends on which one you go to.

But I would not pay 15 or 20 cent's to mine in current situation.  Difficulty is just moving up fast where electricity price will matter even more I think.

You can mine PoS coins, all you need is a laptop online 24/7 and in most cases not even that. Your electricity costs re gonna be minimal. I like DMD Diamond and Flycoin, for example. Proof of stake is the future of mining. Even Etherum ll switch to proof of stake by the end of this year.

The price of bitcoin is not certain to rise. That is just a speculation. But the blockreward is going to halve, that is certain.

the point is that because of the certainty that the block reward will be halved, you have also somehow, the certainty the that price will increase

otherwise it's like saying that bitcoin is doomed to fail at some point

The only thing I am worried is I think some of the huge operations likely if cut in 1/2 still could operate in profit (like Bitfury if they have the gear we suspect).   So there are likely some big guys with electricity so low they can keep going where normal electricity people will be left behind.

We have a while that I hope to see bitcoin slowly build up value.   But if it does not I fear big players still can mine and little guys will be stopped.

For this it is a big risk to start mining now.
Sure you can profit easily for 6 months.

But.. then what?

6 months in mining is a HUGE amount of time.  There will be a next gen likely in that amount of time.  I mean everything changes in that amount.  I likely will sell some miners in next 6 month's of old generation (keeping S7/Avalon 6). But sell them to very low electricity or free electricity users. 

Also you act like 1 time profit is not good.  I would say take 1 time profit and then look at doing it or look other things  next.  You don't pass if your for sure you will profit.  But mining has not been for sure for a long time, it's just very individual.

ah eyah those with free electricity, might mine forever even if bitcoin is at zero

but people shoudl remember that those user are the minority, i would not believe ever that there are even 100 peta out there of "free electricity"

the whole network will not be able to survive only because there are a bunch of due with free electricity

this. Is cool to see somebody not totally blinded..

The problem with those PoS coins is that their price reduce in long term in general. There is no big user community.

Yeah and PoS mining is not like real mining.
I think OP wants to experience of asic mining bitcoin, which is the real thing.

Compared to PoW, PoS is for children.

The cost of PoW gives value to PoW coins. It forms a certain basis for the price for mature coins. The cost of big farms is about $200 at the moment.

The bitcoin price might rise in long term. That is caused by adoption of the bitcoin as a payment method. It is valuable investment as well.

 More like $0.03 from comments I've seen, and at least one small area in the USA that can match that (for now).


 I am anticipating the next generation gear (14/16nm full custom) will start arriving before the halfing.
 BitFury is talking April, but I suspect Innosilicon might beat them to the punch.
 BW.com missed the boat with their B-Eleven NON-full-custom 14nm design, unless it shows up before the end of the month and significantly beats the S7 on price.

I think if you believe in bitcoin you believe it will rise long term.   Mining is no guaranteed profit, you have to enjoy it to do it.  Also you are speculating you will make a ROI. 

This thread thought can pretty much be done long and short term.  21 cent's is just to much to mine on.  As long as you can get a data center for half of  that, it's a far better option.

I mine at 9 cent and it's possible to make profit. But 21 cent makes no sense.

It would better to give your money to charity straight ahead.

The labor cost in the US is too high. In order to run a farm, you also need to construct it and maintain it. The running cost is higher.

Setup is going to be most expensive.  You could have far less people running a mining facility then setup.   A lot can also be automated.   So I think as long as you get cheap electricity it can still be done in US.  But it does take cheap electricity especially at the size your talking about.

There are some hosting centers in US, so it can be done.

 Depends on WHEN you bought them - if you bought them early in 2015, you should have RoIed them fairly easily unless you're paying more than 10c/KWH.

 If you waited for June/July timeframe, you would have needed VERY VERY cheap electric to have a good chance at RoI with them (unless you did like I'm doing and sold them for enough to achieve RoI).


 
 There isn't a lot of labor cost to running a large farm - MegaBigPower has mentioned having a staff of 12 (IIRC) for their BIG Washington farm. That's not much staff needed for one of the bigger farms in the world.

S5 willl not be profitable in the next quarter even if you have very very cheap electricity. The difficulty will at least double when the 16nm comes out.

S5 is bloody near not profitable NOW unless you have VERY cheap electric.
That's WHY I've sold most of mine off (and am trying to sell the last one and my SP20).


 It will take time for the difficulty to double again due to the 14/16NM generation, especially given the reported yield rates from folks like TSMC on that node right now.
 On the other hand, diff has been rising quite fast since shortly after introduction of the S7 just from the "last gasp" of 28nm tech.....

Even if you get a very good price on the elecricity. There is no way you will make ROI.
Remember you have to buy a PSU too. Which makes it unlikely to see any ROI.

I pay 18 cents. It's less then you OP but it is not giving me any profit.
I feel bad i started mining al together. It cost a lot of time and no you won't get you money back.

I suggest selling gear or finding a hosting center.  18 cent's is to much to pay on electricity for mining.  And add cooling on top of that, you are going to lose quite a bit over time mining.   

But with high difficulty changes I think sooner you get out of 18 cent electricity the better.  Hosting you can easily get 10 cent's or less, so even if you send it somewhere for hosting you are far better of.

The power supply you can resuse for other things later though - next generation miner, next computer build, etc. - so if you don't fully RoI the PS it's not a big deal.

Why do people want to mine? Is it because they want to "contribute" to bitcoin network? Is it because they want to "print money"? OP is in the latter camp, based on the question "21 cents per kw, any way to mine?" He/she is keenly aware of her electricity cost and cost is top of her concern, in other words, she's highly concerned with $$$. I'm not judging her, I am also highly concerned when it comes to my money. However, I've been here long enough to KNOW it's too late to mine if you're a regular home miner with limited resources. This forum is littered with noobs asking if they can mine with x.xx cents per kw, as if that's the most important question. It's one of a series of questions you should ask or research for yourself. There are important factors you should consider, one being electricity cost, another being the diff factor, among other things. They have no idea how much diff is rising currently. If they jump in, because of $$$ signs dancing in front of their greedy eyes, they're going to be in a world of hurt later.

Why a particular person wants to mine VARIES WIDELY.

 Many or perhaps even most want to make some extra money, but some are more about "want to support (whatever)coin" and such.


 Realistically, the cost of your electric *IS* the single biggest factor in mining profitability. Yes, there are quite a few others, but if your electric is too expensive none of the other factors MATTER.

not worh especially if you are low budget miner i suggest doing something else .

Right now i would not by any miner. Just wait for the next generation of miners.
The current batch is way overpriced and you will make a big loss on it.

It all depends on electricity price I would say.  Electricity price can make or break you.  I'm doing some moving around with miners doe to this.  But this 21 cent thread ... 21 cent day's are gone with current products.

So there are still people out there that are able to mine, just takes lower cotst.  And hopefully a little more value on btc would be nice for miners.

Well even if you got free electricity, remember you have to buy the PSU too.
Which makes every miner today unprofitable.

Not true PSU's are actually pretty good assuming you don't buy crap.   I have multiple PSU's that I have used multiple generations of miners.  When I sell miners I keep the PSU's so I have mine paid off for most part, I will buy one if needed.

But PSU's you could even sell after to.   It will not be the difference between ROI and not ROI I don't think on most miners.

The only profitable coin to mine at present is the Ethereum. But it is with GPU not any ASIC. If the price drops, it will not be profitable.

Yes. It is still possible to mine Ethereum even with $0.21/kWh power price. But it might not be in the future as the difficulty is rising fast.

it dropped already i assume it's not proftibale anymore, since even without the drop the diff started to increase fast now with the drop it's done

The price of Ethereum is still high, around $5-6. So it is still profitable. If it drops to $3, it will not be profitable.

That is great... but long term GPU mining is still not alive with electricity price, and GPU prices.  Will you ROI on your GPU's?

Unless there is a chance of ROI I don't consider it profitable mining.  Just mining more then electricity.... is not enough for me.

well it depend on electricity, but you're right seems to be still profitable with a small margin, with my electricity the profit would be something like 50 euro per card each month, at best probably less due to fee, invalid random block etcc...

If you can earn 20% profit each year as a business, you will be very happy. The problem with mining is that it is not sustainable.

This is not a regular business in mining terms 1 year is a LONG time.   Gear can change a lot within a single year, so I would argue a sucessful buisness needs to pull profit quicker, or sell machines off and get roi quicker.

Selling machines has helped by bottom line.  I have normal electricity price nothing secial.  So I mine as long as I can being profitable, keeping a eye on prices of gear on secondary markets.  I recently sold all last gen gear.... I invested in coins.  And eventually it will go back into machines.

Right now it's hard to earn profit if you pay less then 10 cents.
Home mining is dead and the next step to centralization has already started.
It's just a matter of months before the game is over.

Home miner is getting harder and harder.  I consider myself a hobby miner slightly bigger then home with my mining area.   I had to get rid of last gen gear just as profit was to small, made far more selling them.

Will be intersting on what next gen gear costs, what difficulty does.  So many variables and not a lot of answers.

A cheap way to earn temporary profit is to setup a trickling solar panel to a battery, and running a low power useage asic until power is gone, stopping asic, trickling again, etc.
You'll be negative for a while due to initial investment, and if at all you ROI, last gen gear will take you over a year to roi. Raspberry pi controllers aren't feasible with solar due to them dying when power is lost, so that cuts a lot of usbs out (which basically kills profit except for a few mining, "standalones". A BFL is great since their easyminer can be used on android). As you can see my method is useless because of the complications, so I now really think 21 cent kw IS TRULY IMPOSSIBLE.

This will not work for most.  Phil is a great example of it working and he teamed up with a expert in solar.   For most of us solar will cost more then cheap electricity.  Cheap electricity makes more sense for most.

And I don't think I have ever heard anyone mention BFL and great in same sentence before.

I just like BFL for their easyminer app. I'm too lazy to use a usb to otg and actually compile cgminer and install crap. Truly BFL sucks and unless you're super desperate, don't buy it. The portability was the only reason, and I just like their heatsink for the jalapeno. I don't know many miners that can run on an android phone, so I just give them a +1 for usefullness (overseas much) and +1 for ingenuity, and -9000 for overpriced-ness and unreliability, and that doesnt include the late shipping.

21 cent per kWh is not suitable for mining Bitcoin. But for the time being, it is OK to mine Ethereum.

Why don't you look for a cheaper source of electricity like solar panels for instance. Mining consumes lots of electricity as you know.

In my country, the electricity costs cheaper when it is the summer season so at that time the profit is higher comparing to winter season which the price is double but 21 cents is much higher than in my country but i think you should have the latest mining rigs to get most of it.

Even with S7, he would lose money at 21 cent/kWh. He could have made some money by mining Ethereum.

Ether mining is unprofitable at 21c/kwh, i believe. even at this high price, ethereum is still not the way to go. the only way to mine is at a loss or with solar panels, which will probably be unprofitable in the end.  Even with panels it's likely you'll only be able to support a small rig. I suggest buying bitcoins and holding for profit, it's basically the only way for profit with high electricity.

But add up cost of 6 GPU rig with nice GPU's.... it's pricey.  Do you believe enough in a in a alt this much?   Could be a 2 grand guess depending on cards.   I personally sold most of my GPU's long ago and worked out well.  I am hesitant to spend big and build nice rigs on a alt currently.  Compare to S7 coupon price, its a much higher investment.

And really you should not be mining anything at 21 cents.  This thread is all about that your killing your ROI by mining with such high electricity price.

a six gpu right cost you around 2500-3000 max, this is 5 antminer s7 right?

but you need to compare also the consumption

5 antminer consume 6kw, against 1kw for the six gpu miner, 5 antimer s7 earn you around 0.07, a sig gpu miner earn you the same basically(2 ethereum a day= 0.058)

For the time being, it is very profitable for GPU mining of the Etheruem. If it becomes not profitable, you can sell the cards.

This is true but I just have trouble going back to GPU, and it could just be a personal thing.  I can remember selling off my rigs before when I stopped GPU mining a ways back..... that is a good amount of ebay sales.  So you counting on a lot of good buyers and not crap ones, not to mention dealing with low ball offers, shipping, etc.   

If Etheruem has problems and you do need to sell, you also compete against all the others getting out of mining it.  That is part I really don't like.  A LOT left gpu mining around the same time with asics and you were selling cards cheaper due to volume of sellers.   So .... again not fun.

Also GPU time I had to babysit a lot more then I do with my asics.  I have had some asics hit a month + without me touching them.  I had a lot more time then this monitoring my GPU rigs.

I'm not saying I won't try it if I see a long term mining, that I can believe in.  But I'm not to that point yet personally.

with bitcoin asic it's the same you're competing every 3 months with the other asic, before your is obsolete again, there is only a small window of profit with bitcoin, from when the miner are available

the good thing about gpu is that they do not depreciate so quickly like asic sha256 or any asic if anything

The only problem is that a GPU is not built to be at near 100% load for extended periods of time, and often what happens is over a period of a month, even well-cooled gpus will start having the effects of heat and components will begin to degrade. I've had a dead R9 270X once mining ethereum for only 2 months. Thus most people buying gpus ask what it was used for if they're buying used gpus, and most people are unwilling to buy gpus used for mining as they know mining will shorten a gpu's life drastically. Unless the buyer is really desperate, few people will buy a used mining gpu as the wear can get pretty bad mining ethereum and other altcoin.

you can send them back for free, amazon can cover your ass for one month, for free, this is true for asic also, bought from them, that's why i order everythign from amazon, not to mention the retailer can cover you for two years

If you keep the temperature below 75c, will they die so easily? I have a few 7990 mining at 70c for two years.

Dam I think I should start a mining hosting farm...
thats not hosted in china ;) you know to keep it decentralized :D


Guess im lucky here...

electric $0.06 from the service providers
$0.05 direct from the main power supplier.

and if we go solar.... <drum roll> 8hrs of sunlight in winter and 12 hours in summer.... hmmmm

 ::) ::) ::)

Now capital that's the problem *sigh*

Well there is a LOT of setup costs I personally would want cheaper then .05 to set up a hosting farm.  Personal mining sure on .05.  But with a hosting farm everything is bigger on costs.  Wiring and cooling, and getting electric company to set you up for that much electricity all comes out to be a lot of upfront costs.

So I don't think you will be profitable for quite a while after setup costs.  And this does not include how hard it will be starting to get people to trust you with their gear.

That is right. For home mining, 0.05/kWh is very profitable as you can use many existing facilities with no extra cost.

Although someone agreeing with me always feels good :).  There is really no need to in this thread.  We should let it die we have a question, and an anwser.  So it's all done as far as what it needed.

We should let thread die or if OP still checks lock thread is even better.

that price? No way, you can still make a profit with ETH, but you wont ROI if you buy your hardware now. You would need to have it paid off and ready to run when the bulls got hold of ETH.

We're in Canada, have been hosting since 2013, and will be opening a new large facility this summer - our total draw between all facilities will be closing in on 10MW by September.

Altcoins like ETH don't seen to be lasting forever. Which is why i only mine bitcoin these days.
Nor would i advice to start mining if you pay 21 cent per KWH. It's just not going to happen (ROI)

it depend if you buy it used, you can find a very good deal on the market, you cna build a rig with 1k or lower now, it should reach roi when you sell it afterward in two 3 months

For me, I will wait and see if the new AMD 490 cards still has the 512 bit memory bus, if it has and price is reasonable, I will buy.

The AMD 490 will have 1024 bit memory bus, that is the HBM2. But it might not be too fast for Ethereum mining.

It's kinda a lot of speculation at this point no one knows speeds of 490 mining Ethereum.  It appears to be faster... how much is the question no one knows.   I think value wise 380/390 will drop.  And 400 series will take it's place. So waiting on the card for holding value I can see a point there.

But you are also missing out of mining currently.  So you might be mining at a higher difficulty.... so even if faster it could equal out or you might lose due to difficulty.  Again all speculation.

I think it is better to buy the R9 390 and mine now. The difficulty will be three times of present value when the 490 comes out.

I saw the experience of early miners of the 480 RX. It is slower than R9 390 and only benefit is lower power consumption.